A Particular Man for a Particular Woman,

No. 2

M-4B

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)

We now take up the second part of a particular man for a particular woman. In God's eternal design of His creation, we would logically expect Him to provide a specific man for each specific woman in marriage. The Bible confirms that this indeed is His arrangement--a unique one-for-one relationship. We looked at several evidences, the first of which was the precedent of creation. Genesis 2:21-25 indicate that when God provided the woman for Adam, He created Eve. He designed her in such a way that she specifically fit and was suited in every way for Adam, and she was brought to Adam by God.

Secondly, there was the analogy to church truth in Ephesians 5:31-33. Here we had the evidence that as Jesus Christ is Lord to the church, in a relationship that none other could hold that position to the church, so to the right husband is to the right wife.

The third evidence was that the right partners have bodies designed for each other alone (Jeremiah 31:22). Here we are told that God, in His creative act, introduced a new thing when he created the woman, when he brought her into being, in that he designed her physically to fit her one perfect right man, Adam. In the animal world, there is not a specific animal for another specific animal. So, this was a new thing introduced into creation, that one being should be physically designed to fit another being.

1 Corinthians 11:7

We now begin with the fourth evidence. In 1 Corinthians 11:7, the right woman is the glory of the right man: "For a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man." The background of this passage was the discussion that had arisen in the New Testament church concerning the wearing of headgear in the local church services. The Jews, who had now become Christians, from their background were used to wearing head covering within their worship services--something in the form of a skullcap. The Jews' practice became an issue with the gentile Christians. Should a gentile man have to wear a hat when he attends church service? Verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 11 says, "Every man praying or prophesying having his head covered dishonors his head." So, the Apostle Paul pointed out that under Christianity things are different. Under the Old Testament order a man was to have his head covered, but under Christianity, it's just the opposite, and there are no hats to be worn in church.

Women's Hair Length

Now, concerning women there was an issue of head covering. Verse 5 says, "But every woman that prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved." Christian women are to have a covering on their heads in worship services. Verse 15 tells us what that covering is: "But if a women have long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for covering." Her hair is to be her covering, and it has to be longer, specifically, than her particular right man. Now, verse 6 indicates that it is a shame for a woman not to have appropriate covering upon her head in the form of hair that's a right relative length to her right man. "For if the women be not covered let her also have her hair cut off. But if it be a shame for a woman to have her hair cut off or shaved, let her be covered.

During World War II it was a practice in many European countries for women who had collaborated with the enemy to have their hair cut off and then the head shaved. It was a sign of disgrace. It is a woman's sign of her submission to her man to have this covering upon her head. Verse 13 says, "Judging yourselves. Is it seemly that a woman pray to God uncovered?" "Judging yourselves" means think this thing over yourself on the background of what you understand and what you know. Is it proper for women to pray to God without her hair covering? Now the Greek language has a way of asking questions which also indicates the answer which is expected. In this case the question is asked in such a way that it indicates that the answer should be a negative. No, it is not proper for a woman to pray unto God without her hair covering. It is a sign of submission to her right man.

Notice verse 10: "For this cause, ought the woman to have authority on her head because of the angels." It is offensive to the elect angels who gather with the Christians in the assembly services to see a woman whose hair is not the proper length in respect to her particular man. It's a sign of a problem that the woman faced once before when she was in subjection to demonic beings in Genesis 6. Angelic beings married into the human race, took wives unto themselves of women. These women were in subjection to the wrong people. They were not in subjection to those for whom God had designed them to be in subjection. So the proper length of hair is the signal that the woman is in proper submission to the right particular man. This is pleasing to the angels who are gathered in the room with you when you are in a worship service.

In verse 14 we have the divine principle relative to hair length. "Doesn't even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?" The normal order of nature indicates that men are to have short hair compared to their particular woman. Long hair is a woman's glory because it is a sign of her right attitude of submission to her particular man. Long hair is a feminine sign of submission, and thus on a man it is a sign of shame. Man is an aggressor toward the woman. This is signified by his short hair. Woman, as responder in the sight of God, signifies this with her longer hair.

Sin began in Eden when the woman became the aggressor and the man responded to her. When she should have been subjecting herself to her husband's leadership, she was taking charge, and he was standing around letting her do it. Instead of he listening to her, he should have been directing and talking to her so that she was conforming herself to the truth which God had taught them, to the doctrine which they had learned. But it was just the opposite. She took the role of aggressor. This is why the relative hair length is made an issue of here in this passage. It's alright for a man to sit in church without a hat on under New Testament order. It is not alright for a woman to sit in church with hair that is not the proper suitable length in reference to her right man. It fails to signify, to recognize, and to respect her role as the responder.

Historically, a decadent society, interestingly enough, is reflected in men wearing long hair. This is accompanied as well by homosexuality. This has been the pattern of nations in the past. When a society begins to go down, it is accompanied by men whose hair becomes increasingly feminine in appearance.

So the doctrine of a particular man and a particular woman is pictured here by hair lengths. The woman came from the man and needs fulfillment by him. That clarifies their role. Now today, you may wear your hair shorter than your particular woman but longer than is usually worn by men so that it looks feminine in appearance. You may say, "Well, as long as my hair is shorter than my particular woman, I'm not violating a scriptural principle." While that may be true, you are to remember that in our day, the length of hair indicates something that is in the way of a rebellion. It indicates a certain rebellious attitude towards certain established principles and ideals. When you wear the hippie type hair, you are associating yourself with what the hippie type movement stands for. It isn't just such a simple thing that you're wearing your hair in a different style.

During the war, I noticed in the Marine Corps there were many Marines who thought they would add some class to their appearance by growing mustaches. I did myself for a while. But the mustache was not some broad scale general practice that indicated a rebellion or a resistance or had any meaning. It was just here and there, some of the men felt like growing mustaches. But that's not the case with long hair today. It is actually associated with a certain movement. So if you choose to wear your hair in a feminine style, you cannot escape the fact that you are being associated, intentionally or unintentionally, with a certain movement.

Now verse 7 speaks of the man's glory: "For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, for as much as he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man." "Image" here refers to the essence of a man's soul. It is real, but it is immaterial. In this way he is in the image of God. God has an essence. It's an immaterial essence and yet it is real. God has infinite self-awareness. Man has self-awareness, but God's is infinite. Man has mentality, but God has omniscience in his mentality. God has a will, a sovereign will, over against man's finite will. Man has feelings, but God has perfect feelings. Man has certain standards, but God's are absolute standards of right and wrong. So man reflects the essence in his soul of God himself. In this way he is the glory of God. He does not possess God's glory or his perfection, but he reflects them. How does he do this? He does this when he develops within his soul a level of spiritual maturity--a spiritual maturity structure which reflects the glory of God. In this structure he is, in effect, fulfilled by God. Each man's spiritual life is a personalized expression of God's glory--a response in his own personalized way to the Word of God.

Likewise, the woman is the man's glory. The woman's soul and body and femininity blossom to the glory of a man because he is the one who is drawing this out of her as he fulfills her. She can only respond to the right man's glory in the fullest degree. She can only be the glory of her own particular right man.

So we have here in this passage in 1 Corinthians 11:7 the declaration that the right woman is the glory of the right man, and that she cannot be somebody else's glory, even as man, as he has developed spiritual maturity in a way that is conformable and personalized and custom-made to his own soul, is in his way reflecting the glory of God.

Now, a fifth evidence is found in Ezekiel 16 where we have indicated that soul love and sex love cannot be achieved apart from the right mates. Soul love and sex love cannot be achieved apart from the right mates. Now this passage of Scripture has some very plain speaking language. For some of you it might be a little startling to hear the Bible speak in such understandable terms. You're going to have some mental pictures drawn for you through this particular passage which are very loathsome to contemplate. God is getting across a point which is very important. God the Holy Spirit is using language which we can get hold of. So if this offends you, if this distresses you, as you read it, just remember that you're dealing with the Word of God, and that God knows what we need to hear, and there is no ground for our recoiling from something that He has said.

Ezekiel 16

In the first six verses of Ezekiel 16, we have Judah presented as a loathsome castoff: "Again the word of the Lord came unto to me saying." Now this is the prophet Ezekiel speaking under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, and he is picturing the unfolding of the lowest kind of depravity on the part of a woman in relationship to her right particular man. Verse 2: "Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations." "Son of Man" is an address, a title, for the prophet Ezekiel. Jerusalem is Judah viewed as a woman with God as her particular man, and fulfilled by Him in marriage. The context shows that her abominations are the idolatry of the people of Judah and the southern kingdom. Their idolatry dealt particularly with a phallic, that is the sex cults, which are accompanied by child sacrifice. Judah had increasingly descended into idol worship in spite of the fact that God was her husband, and God was her right man. Here is a tremendous picture now of grace which follows.

Verse 3: "And say, 'Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem. Your birth and your nativity are of the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.'" "Birth" here is really "origin." "Your origin and your nativity" refers to his birth. Both of these were from the heathendom of Canaan. Judah had bad lineage. Her father was an Amorite; her mother, a Hittite. There is nothing to brag upon there.

Verse 4: "As for your birth, in the day that you were born, your navel was not cut. Neither were you washed in water to cleanse you. You were not salted at all, nor swaddled at all." Judah, the right woman, is born, but her mother dies. The child is not separated from the dead mother. Instead both are cast into the field. The child, unwashed and unsalted, as was the custom of the day for newborn infants, and un-diapered or unclothed.

Verse 5: "No eye pitied you to do any of these unto you (that is, to take care of a newborn infant) to have compassion upon you. But you were cast out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born." No one pitied this castoff child representing Judah. Instead, she was the recipient of maximum loathing at her birth. She had bad lineage. She was born with a mother who had died and was still attached by the umbilical cord to this mother, and in her bloody birth condition, was simply cast into the field as some animal.

Verse 6: "And when I passed by you and saw you polluted in your own blood, I said unto you, when you were in your blood, 'Live.'" The Lord, as Judah's right man comes along and sees his right woman kicking in her own birth blood. Now God in grace says to this loathsome Judah, the most gracious word imaginable--the word of all words: "Live." We too are born spiritually dead and the Lord Jesus Christ comes along and he sees us kicking in our own blood birth, so to speak, loathsome and dead. And He says to us, "Live"--the most magnificent moment of grace when we are born again. Everyone who is a born again believer is in that condition because one day Jesus Christ came along. God the Holy Spirit saw to it that somebody brought you the right information concerning the gospel--that Christ has died for our sins, that He has risen, and that all of the wall that separated us from God has been removed. All we have to do now is accept what He has provided. And when we accepted, Jesus Christ looked at us and said, "Live," and we became spiritually alive. Now that's what God did when he found Judah in this loathsome condition.

Verse 7: "I caused you to multiply as the bud of the field and you have increased and become great. You have come to excellent ornaments. Your breasts are fashioned and your hair is grown. Yet you were naked and bare." The words "multiply as the bud" means "grown into a flower of beauty." Judah has blossomed into a beautiful woman. She has developed physically into an attractive young lady under the Lord's grace.

Verse 8: "Now when I passed by you and looked upon you, your time was the time of love." This means that she had now come to the time for marriage. "I spread my skirt over you and covered you nakedness." This is a symbolic expression for the ritual of marriage. "'I swore unto you and entered into a covenant with you,' said the Lord God, 'and you became mine.'" The Lord who was the right man for Judah entered into a covenant of marriage with her, and she became his. Now the reason he could speak of her as his own is because they were designed for each other. Judah was right for the Lord, and the Lord was her right man. This is the only way a man can look at a woman and say to her, "You have become mine." It is only fully and truly possible when she is his right particular woman and he is her right man.

Verse 9: "Then I washed you with water. I thoroughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil." The Lord describes his care for his bride Judah, all symbolic of the exercise of His grace. "I clothed you also with embroidered work, and shod you with badger skin. And I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk. I decked you also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon your hands, a chain on your neck, and I put a jewel in your nose and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head." He was moved to place ornaments upon her and to dress her in a way to bring out and enhance her beauty.

Verse 13: "Thus were you decked with gold and silver, and your raiment was of fine linen and silk and embroidered work. You did eat fine flour and honey and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and you prospered into a kingdom." She was a breathtaking magnetic beauty because Judah was related to her right man. So, the Lord said she became exceedingly beautiful. A particular woman with her particular man has a way of radiating beauty physically. She may not look like much, but when she's in her right combination, she radiates a beauty from within. "Prospered into a kingdom" means that the marriage deepened in its affection and in its expression.

Verse 14: "Then your fame went forth among the nations for your beauty, for it was perfect through my splendor which I had put upon you, said the Lord God." The right marriage combination was a thing to talk about. People heard about it, and they were interested, and they were delighted, and they were attracted by this winsome combination of the Lord and His Judah. "Perfect through my splendor" means that it was the grace of the right man God that gave Judah her loveliness. A woman, when she responds to her right man, becomes a radiant beauty no matter what her looks may have been otherwise.

Now, verse 15 begins the story of the gradual breakdown of this beauty. You have the picture so far. She's picked up in a loathsome condition, a bloody infant attached to a dead mother whom no one would touch or have anything to do with. Her right man, the Lord, comes along and He picks her up, He points to her, and He says, "Live." He cleans her up. He nurtures her. She grows into a magnificent beauty until she comes to the time of marriage and He takes her as His own.

But now notice verse 15. Something begins to happen to the relationship of this right man and his right woman: "But you trusted in your own beauty and played the harlot because of your renown, and poured out your fornications on every one that passed by; his it was." "Trusted in your own beauty" means that a mental attitude sin of pride entered the marriage--Satan's own sin. The result was that she began to play the role of an immoral woman, the harlot, squandering her beauty by rejecting her particular man, the Lord, and giving herself to her wrong man, the idol gods, to whom she turned. Her renown is her glamor. Because of her renown, because of her glamor, it led her to pride over what grace of her right man had made of her. Instead of recognizing that her glamor and her beauty was the result of the man that she was associated with, she took it as a signal for pride on her part, and she began to go downward. She gave herself increasingly to sex sin with a number of wrong men, all of whom no doubt she viewed at the time as dreamboats.

Verse 16: "And of your garments, you made for yourself high places with various colors and played the harlot on them, which should never come about or happen." The high places here are the places where the phallic sex cults worship. They were hill locations on which the heathen gathered. They danced wildly, gyrating in a position where a partner stood facing each other separated from one another, and fornication took place. Sex scenes were proliferated upon that hill, and children in the course of the worship, infants, were cast alive into the fire. Here Judah played the harlot, that is, increasing illicit sex on the phallic hills. The distortion between the right mates and the consequences of the hardening of her own soul.

Verse 17: "You have also taken you fair jewels of my gold and of my silver which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and did commit harlotry with them." "Images of men." Now she descends another step. She takes the precious metals which God gave her and with which he had adorned her, and she melts them and makes them into the images of men so that she may use them for sex purposes. This actually is big business in the United States today. It is possible to purchase devices of this kind for the same kind of degenerate practice. The right woman began with pride. She went to adultery, and then to degeneracy of sex with idols who had been formed in the shape of men.

Verse 18: "'You took an embroidered garment and covered them, and you have set my oil and my incense before them, my food also which I gave you, fine flour and oil and honey with which I fed you. You have even set it before them for a sweet savor, and thus it was,' said the Lord God." She worshiped her idol lovers as gods. Love to something which lacked a soul. This is the height of perversion. And we have this sort of thing in the world with us today.

During World War II, I spent a tour of duty in China. One day the colonel was going to Peking, the old capital of China, and he took a few of his officers with him. Another officer and I who were particularly good friends teamed up, and we found ourselves a rickshaw boy named Buddha. The advertiser spoke of himself as the being Peking's number one rickshaw boy. After the war I got back to the United States and I picked up a copy of Life magazine, and there I saw the picture of this very man, and it was entitled "Buddha, Peking's Number One Rickshaw Boy." So we hired him for the day, hopped into our jeep, and he took us all over the magnificent city of Peking, the old capital city of the empire.

One of the places he took us to was a lama temple. The priests were gathered in their saffron robes in prayer in the temple, and he took us to another building, and after consulting with one of the caretakers, he suddenly threw open the door, and there was a long flight of stairs going upstairs. He put out his hand and we understood that they wanted special payment for something that they were going to show us upstairs on the second floor of this building. So we gave them ten cents, which was a lot of Chinese yen. They quickly rushed us up these stairs and took us before a platform on which were some objects, but under cover. The assistant stepped up and he whipped off this cloth covering. And there were exposed to us the phallic gods called "gods of evil," in various illicit sex poses and contortions. These were considered such evil gods that they were kept out of sight and under cover. And these men were rushing us up there to show us something in the part of the Buddhist worship that was not to be ordinarily exposed to public eye. They were eager for us to be up there, and then they rushed us out of there lest some of the priests would discover what they were doing. So we have those who still worship the evil gods of sex.

Verse 20: "Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters whom you have born unto me and these have you sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of your harlotries a small matter, that you have slain my children and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?" What he is saying here is that the children, apparently from the illicit sex which was practiced on the hills, were then in turn burned in sacrifice. He is saying, "Was fornication in itself too little that you had to burn the children alive too?"

Verse 22: "And in all your abominations and your harlotries you have not remembered the days of your youth when you were naked and bare and were polluted in your blood. And it came to pass after all your wickedness. Woe, woe unto you, said the Lord God." Judah forgot where grace had taken her, from whence she had come. She began with a godly sex, to rotating partners, and now she had degenerated to a fulfillment with dumb idols. So she gradually gets more degenerate.

Verse 24: "That you have also built yourself an eminent place and have made yourself a high place in every street." "Eminent place" refers to a house of prostitution in the city. And "a high place in every street" are stalls for immoral practices, for prostitution.

Verse 25: "You have built the high place at every head of the way and have made your beauty to be abhorred, and have opened your feet to everyone that passed by, and multiplied your harlotries." She is available now to any buyer. Then the Scripture lists the types to which she is responding.

Verse 26: "You have also committed fornication with the Egyptians, your neighbors, great of flesh, and have increased your harlotries to provoke me." The Egyptian, great of flesh, the fat slob Egyptian. She had no taste left.

Verse 27: "Even the degenerate philistines were shocked by her. Behold therefore I have stretched out my hand over you and have diminished your ordinary food and delivered you unto the will of them that hate you, the daughters of the Philistines who are ashamed of your lude ways."

In verse 28, she turned to the enemy Assyrians since now she was physically insatiable because she was trying to be satisfied by the wrong man: "You have played the harlot also with the Assyrian because you were insatiable. Yes, you have played the harlot with them and yet could not be satisfied." She multiplied her adulteries throughout Canaan with no satisfaction.

Verse 29: "You have moreover multiplied your fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea, and yet you were not satisfied with this.

In verse 30, her heart refers to the degeneracy of her conscience. Her soul lacking any divine values and any divine standards: "'How weak is your heart (the direction of her mentality),' said the Lord God, 'seeing that you do all these things, the work of an imperious harlot.'" The word "imperious" mean domineering. She has now taken one more step downward and she is ruling with sex over men instead of responding to men. She is taking the role of aggressor.

In Verse 31, this dominance, this domineering attitude, is expressed: "In that you build your eminent place in the head of every way." "Eminent place" is a house of prostitution. "And make your high place in every street." "High place" refers to the stalls for prostitution at the corners of the streets. "And you have not been as a harlot in that you scorn hire." The usual prostitute is paid, but this one has degenerated to the point where she stops taking money for sex so that she may draw more customers to herself. "But like a wife who commits adultery who takes strangers instead of her husband." She plays the role of the adulterous wife in submitting and substituting wrong men for her own particular man. She is trying to find satisfaction that she can never find with the wrong men.

Verse 33: "They give gifts to all harlots, but you give gifts to all your lovers, and hire them that they may come unto you on every side for your harlotry." Now she sinks even lower. She not only does not take pay, but she begins to pay men to act as sex partners with her.

Verse 34: "And you are different from other women in your harlotries whereas none follow you to commit harlotries, and in that you give a reward, and no reward is given unto you; therefore you are different." She is different from other prostitutes who must be paid. She pays men to come to her.

Verse 35: "Wherefore O harlot hear the Word of the Lord." Then in the verses which follow on here from verse 35 to verse 60, we have description of the problem of the mental attitude sins that now possess Judah, beginning with pride in herself as a result of what the Lord had made her, and the perversions to which she has sunk, and divine discipline which she is going to experience. It concludes with verse 59, saying, "For thus says the Lord God. I will even deal with you as you have done who has despised the oath in the breaking of the covenant.

Then comes verse 60, the beautiful picture of the restoration of this debased fallen degenerate loathsome woman by the grace of God. Verse 60: "Nevertheless I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish unto you an everlasting covenant. God says, "I'm going to remember that I am your right man, and that I have been chosen for you, and I have chosen you for myself." No matter how low a Christian sinks, God stays with him. Judah took the wonderful love of God, her right man, and squandered it on wrong people. She broke the concept of a particular man and a particular woman, but grace nevertheless will restore. She discovered by her sad experience that there was no way--no way--that she could find satisfaction apart from her right man. Once she left him, she found that soul love and sex love could not be achieved apart from him.

Verse 61: "'Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed. When you will receive your sisters, your elder and your younger, and I will give them onto you for daughters, but not by your covenant. And I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be confounded and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you for all that you have done,' says the Lord God." Here is the grand declaration. "That when she is confounded" means ashamed. And when the Lord has been pacified, reconciled to Judah because she has confessed her sin to Him, her sin of unfaithfulness, that they will never discuss it again. She is not to open her mouth concerning the subject. Her forgiveness will be complete, and her shame will never again be mentioned.

Now what this passage teaches us is that God's grace is based on who and what He is only, and alone, and grace never ends. If the wrong woman gets away from her right man in sex, she finds no true fulfillment, and tends to go down. Denying a proper partner for her particular soul and body leads to her destruction and to the destruction of her satisfaction. It takes, because God has designed one-for-one, that one person for soul love and for sex love. Sex apart from your own particular partner becomes a self-destruction. Thus, soul love and sex love cannot be achieved apart from the right mates.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1970

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